Train underpass near Swami's beach coming

Various views of train tracks near Santa Fe Drive and Vulcan Avenue on Tuesday in Encinitas, California. The city of Encinitas will soon break ground on a pedestrian and bicycle underpass in the area to minimize dangerous train track crossings.
— Eduardo Contreras

Various views of train tracks near Santa Fe Drive and Vulcan Avenue on Tuesday in Encinitas, California. The city of Encinitas will soon break ground on a pedestrian and bicycle underpass in the area to minimize dangerous train track crossings.
— Eduardo Contreras

ENCINITAS  A man in a pickup pulled off Vulcan Avenue near Santa Fe Drive on a recent Thursday afternoon, grabbed his surfboard, and crossed the train tracks to get down to Swami’s beach.

Around the same time, a man and woman carrying a baby jaywalked across Highway 101, stepped over the tracks (a train was nowhere in sight), and traversed the uphill dirt path that led back into Cardiff.

A few minutes later an elderly woman in a straw hat and jogging attire walked down the hill and crossed the train tracks to reach Highway 101.

The pattern is all too common in Encinitas, where an Amtrak and a Coaster passed in opposite directions in that 15-minute span. Crossing train tracks is a rarely enforced misdemeanor. But it’s punishable with up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine, sheriff’s Lt. Glenn Giannantonio said.

Still, surfers, joggers, bikers and pedestrians routinely do it to get to the beaches because the legal route involves a 1.3-mile walk south to Chesterfield Drive, or a more than half mile walk north to E street. A no trespassing on railroad property sign is posted near Santa Fe Drive.

“There’s not one person I know who hesitates when going across the train tracks,” said one man who had just crossed, adding that he had received three warnings from deputies in Encinitas in the past 20 years.

Later this year, however, those who want to cross the tracks will not have to violate the law to do so. Encinitas is breaking ground Jan. 18 on a pedestrian underpass that will allow beachgoers to reach Highway 101 from the Cardiff bluffs. Construction on the roughly $5 million project should take eight to nine months, Assistant City Manager Richard Phillips said.

Encinitas Mayor Jerome Stocks, a member of the North County Transit District board, said 52 trains pass through the city each day. Giannantonio said crossing the tracks is dangerous, both to the pedestrian and to the trains. Crossers can push gravel away from the track and loosen the railroad ties, he said. Giannantonio said the department issued two citations in 2011, according to his available records.

Justin Fornelli, the transit district’s chief rail engineer, said a crosswalk and pedestrian traffic light are planned for Highway 101 near the underpass so those who cross do not have to jaywalk on the street to get to the beaches. Train service will not be interrupted except for one weekend when tracks are moved, Fornelli said. The concrete underpass will have a 9-foot pedestrian clearance, be Americans with Disabilities Act compliant, and be 30 feet wide. The height of the track, however, will not increase.

The Santa Fe Drive crossing is the first of four underpasses planned throughout Encinitas. The city and the North County Transit District partnered on the underpasses after a legal settlement between the two agencies in 2002 regarding adding a second track for passing through the 1.7 miles of railroad in Encinitas. Encinitas sued the transit district over its plan to add the track but lost in federal court. Fornelli said the Santa Fe Drive underpass was chosen first due to its location near Swami’s and the volume of track crossings.

The Encinitas City Council approved the Santa Fe Drive underpass in 2009. The three other locations are near Grandview and Beacon’s Beaches in Leucadia, and at Montgomery Avenue in Cardiff. The total cost of all four projects is $25.5 million, but funding is not secured for the remaining three.

The Santa Fe Drive underpass will be paid for with $1.2 million from Encinitas, $3 million from the San Diego Association of Governments, and $1.25 million in state grants, Phillips said.